Berlin: Barbie's New Home

The famous doll now has a life-sized mansion in the center of European Bohemianism.

By reputation, Berlin is a city of weirdos, where eccentricity rules and Bohemianism reigns supreme.

But this week, the city unveiled a thoroughly conventional new attraction -- a life-sized "Barbie Dreamhouse," covering about 1,400 square meters. Among other things, visitors can try on clothes (natch); tour her living room and kitchen; and take lunch on the edge of a giant fountain in the shape of a high-heeled show. Everything is, obviously, very, very pink.

The house is just steps from Berlin's Alexanderplatz shopping district. It is the second such amusement park -- the first is in Florida.

"It provides a completely new insight into the living interior and lifestyle of the most famous doll in the world,” said Christoph Rahofer, of marketing company EMS which obtained the rights to the attraction from US manufacturer Mattel.

At its opening events, protesters gathered outside claiming the house offered nothing more than a “cliché of the female role in society."